“When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn’t buying smashed avocado for $19 [£11] and four coffees at $4 [£2.30] each,” Gurner said on the show. “We’re at a point now where the expectations of younger people are very, very high.”

“The people that own homes today worked very, very hard for it,” he said, adding that if they “saved every dollar, did everything they could to get up the property investment ladder.”

He wrote: “I have seen young people order smashed avocado with crumbled feta on five-grain toasted bread at $22 a pop and more. I can afford to eat this for lunch because I am middle aged and have raised my family. But how can young people afford to eat like this? Shouldn’t they be economising by eating at home? How often are they eating out? Twenty-two dollars several times a week could go towards a deposit on a house.”